


feel my heart beat slow (I can't let you go)

by FullmetalChords



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Pushing Daisies Fusion, First Love, M/M, Reanimation, Temporary Character Death, my eighteen year old self went feral, plastic wrap, temporary animal death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-24 20:35:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22104034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FullmetalChords/pseuds/FullmetalChords
Summary: The facts were these: Claude von Riegan was dead. Nothing was going to change that.Nothing, perhaps, except for Dimitri.--A Pushing Daisies-inspired AU, written for Day 2 of Dimiclaude week (First and Last, with a dash of Modern AU).
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 12
Kudos: 156





	feel my heart beat slow (I can't let you go)

**Author's Note:**

> I basically went into a trance this morning and wrote this whole thing? I tagged it with temporary character death but please don't be too sad, everyone gets better (except for redacted).
> 
> also ofc I took the title from cascada because the joke made me laugh in the middle of my trance state

The facts were these: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd was in love.  
  
He was seventeen years, three months, and twenty-seven days old when he entered Garreg Mach Secondary School, the haughtiest private school his father’s money could buy. The school was highly prestigious, his father had told him. He would be able to attend any college he wanted, if he only spent a year at Garreg Mach. Still, Dimitri hated it there, with its pious professors, monks roaming the halls policing students for any wrongdoing, and the general holier-than-thou atmosphere of the whole place.  
  
At least, he hated it until he walked into his first day of homeroom, and Claude von Riegan sat next to him.  
  
Claude von Riegan was seventeen years, nine months and three days old, and Dimitri thought he was beautiful.  
  
Their relationship developed slowly at first. They both had their walls to overcome, barriers they each kept in place to protect themselves from others, each for their own private reasons. It took Dimitri months to understand that Claude’s flirtations had real intention behind them; it took months for Claude, similarly, to understand that Dimitri’s casual words of praise and affection were dizzyingly sincere. And so it was not until the day they graduated from Garreg Mach – both of them all of eighteen years old, wide-eyed and ready to go out into the world – that Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd and Claude von Riegan shared their first – and only – kiss.  
  
Dimitri will dream of that kiss until the day he finally leaves this mortal coil. The softness of Claude’s mouth, the little sighs he’d made as Dimitri had held him. The way Dimitri had, if only for a moment, been able to taste the flavor of chamomile that lingered on Claude’s tongue from his breakfast.  
  
“Dimitri!”  
  
His uncle’s voice distracted him from across the quad, beckoning him closer, and Dimitri had had to pull away from Claude, still gripping the sleeve of his graduation gown.  
  
“I… have to go,” he said, halting, still dazed from the feeling of Claude’s mouth on his.  
  
Claude had just smiled, holding out his phone.

“Selfie?”  
  
They’d posed for the picture on Claude’s phone, faces close together, Claude managing to snap a picture where he was kissing Dimitri’s cheek.  
  
“I’ll send them to you,” he promised Dimitri.  
  
Dimitri nodded, halting. There was so much he still wanted to say to Claude, so much he wanted to share. So much Claude deserved to know about him.  
  
“Claude…”  
  
“Dimitri, let’s go!”  
  
“Go on,” Claude told him, sending him off with a wink. “I’ll be seeing you soon.”  
  
“Okay.” Dimitri gulped, nodding. “Okay.”  
  
He went back in for one quick hug, memorizing the way Claude’s body felt against his, before heeding his uncle’s call.  
  
This was not goodbye, he reasoned with himself. He would see Claude again soon. Claude had promised.  
  
\--  
  
But Claude could not have known, then, that he would never see Dimitri again.  
  
Not for as long as he lived.  
  
\--  
  
It’s present day, and Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd is now twenty-two years, seven months and thirty-two minutes old. He has not left his apartment in four months, three days, and seventeen hours, for fear of what might transpire outside his front door.  
  
The only human contact he has, these days, comes from his neighbor and childhood friend, Felix Fraldarius.  
  
“You’re going to have to leave this house sometime, boar,” he tells Dimitri today, during his biweekly grocery delivery. “When was the last time you saw the sun, honestly? Or a barber?”  
  
Dimitri reaches up to touch his unkempt hair. It’s growing long again, down past his shoulders and hanging over his eyes.  
  
“It’s no concern of yours,” he tells Felix, then bows. “Thank you for delivering my groceries.”  
  
“Hmph.”  
  
Four months, four days and eleven hours ago, Dimitri had another of his ‘episodes’. He gives them this name because, quite honestly, he is not certain what else one would call an instance in which his skin accidentally came into contact with a side of beef, which had then started mooing.  
  
He has not dared to leave his house since then. He cannot be trusted to be in public, where at any given moment his abnormalities might be made apparent.  
  
Felix stays, helping Dimitri to unpack the food he brought. Fresh produce, blocks of cheese, dried pasta, canned beans. No meat to speak of, of course. Dimitri has been a vegetarian his entire life out of sheer necessity.  
  
“I just think you’re being ridiculous. Keeping yourself locked up here like you’re poison—ah, damn it,” Felix swears, reaching into the bag and pulling out a container of withered-looking strawberries. “Looks like they’ve gone off.”  
  
Dimitri opens the container, looking thoughtfully at the berries. They do look revolting, graying and desiccated, with a spot of mold blooming on one of them.  
  
Dimitri takes a deep breath, reaches in, and pulls out the moldy strawberry. Before both of their eyes, it comes back to life: plump, bright red, juicy looking, not a spot of decay in sight.  
  
Dimitri locks his eyes with Felix’s, who has taken in this magical occurrence with all the dispassion one might use when seeing a dog perform the same trick a thousandth time in a row.  
  
“I’ll make them work.”  
  
Felix rolls his eyes. “Showoff.”  
  
\--  
  
Outside, in Dimitri’s window box, precisely sixty seconds later, a yellow daisy withers and dies.  
  
\--  
  
The facts were these: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd was not like any human being born before him, nor since. No ordinary human being, after all, had the power to bring the dead back to life with nothing but a simple touch of his finger.  
  
Felix was the only living person who knew about this power, stemming back an incident from when they were children. His beloved cat, Zoltan, had gotten into an accident, the poor creature lying stretched out in the middle of the road thanks to a careless driver. Felix had been seven years, two months, eight days old, crying, cradling the corpse of his pet into his arms as he brought it over to Dimitri, as though his friend could repair the cat the way his mother might repair a broken doll.  
  
But the facts were these: Dimitri _had_. One touch of his finger to the fur, and Zoltan had leapt up in Felix’s arms, alive and yowling, as spirited as ever. He had started to spit at Dimitri, who’d instinctively backed away.  
  
Neither of the boys had noticed a nearby squirrel stiffen and fall off the branch of the oak tree they stood near, precisely sixty seconds later.  
  
Dimitri spent his adolescence learning the laws of his powers, how they worked, wanting to be careful not to abuse it – and all of his careful preparation had left him only with the growing impulse to be left alone. To avoid others, avoid forming attachments, prevent them from seeing how strange he is. Who is to say, after all, how humanity will react when encountering someone as spectacular as Dimitri? Who could avoid the temptation, asking him to bring their deceased loved ones back to life? Who is to say who might lock him up, keep him under close study to uncover what makes him tick, so his powers might be replicated?  
  
Not to mention the incident just after high school that made Dimitri abandon his plans for college, deciding once and for all to keep himself locked away from the outside world.   
  
He’d chosen, after that, to move out of his uncle’s house into this small one-bedroom apartment, where he works as a consultant via phone and orders most of his necessities online. Felix is his only regular visitor; he hasn’t met most of his neighbors.  
  
He hasn’t let himself really think about Claude in years.  
  
That is, not until he turns on the local news that evening.  
  
“—story is still unfolding regarding the body of a young man found in a local hotel. Sources say the man was a consultant for the federal government, in town to audit…”  
  
Dimitri often watches the news, wanting to keep abreast of what is happening in the world outside his apartment even if he does not feel he belongs there. He has heard stories of terrible things happening outside his apartment, which, frankly, make him feel as though his decision to remain a recluse has been a sound one.  
  
But this story in particular… it gives him a sinking feeling in his stomach, like his world is about to tilt on its axis.  
  
And then, it does.  
  
“…young man has been identified as Claude von Riegan, twenty-three years old. His body was found inside the ice bin at Gronder Inn—”  
  
The television flashes a picture on the screen then, and Dimitri’s stomach drops. The man on the screen looks a few years older than the boy he’d known in school, a hint of a beard on his jawline and his hair artfully slicked back, but those eyes… Goddess, Dimitri would know them anywhere.  
  
He gets to his feet, instinctive, every nerve in his body remembering the day they’d kissed, the sound of his laughter ringing in his head.  
  
“Claude,” he says, once, broken.  
  
\--  
  
Felix goes with him to the memorial service.  
  
Dimitri is wearing his only suit, the ill-fitting one with the skinny blue tie, sitting stiffly on the bus that will take him and Felix out of the city, into the small town an hour away that Claude had called home. Felix clears his throat.  
  
“Good of you to pay your respects,” he says, his voice free of its usual disdain. “Your hair even looks… somewhat normal.”  
  
Dimitri touches the back of his head, where he’d tried to pull his bangs back into a ponytail. There’d been no time to get his hair cut, with Claude’s funeral happening so soon. It’s only been a day since he saw the news report, a day since his world had irreversibly tilted.  
  
Felix shifts on the hard plastic seat beside him. “You were friends, right? Back at that school your dad sent you to?”  
  
Dimitri takes a moment to answer. He still has the pictures of him and Claude from graduation day on his phone – he’d spent all the night before looking through them again, struck the casual way Claude had kissed his cheek. Sometimes, even before this had happened, Dimitri has daydreamed about how things might have been if he’d been a different man with fewer secrets to hide. The life he and Claude might have had together.  
  
But now, Claude von Riegan is dead.  
  
“Sweethearts, I suppose you could say,” he finally murmurs. Felix’s mouth twitches.  
  
“You would say something like that.”  
  
They spend the rest of the ride there in silence.  
  
Somehow, they’re an hour early for the memorial service; the funeral home is nearly deserted, save the director and an older gentleman. They walk by, the older man talking loudly about his wishes for his own funeral service, the details he wants to make absolutely right, the extravagant way he wants to be sent out. A woman about Dimitri’s age is following closely in his wake – their eyes meet and she rolls her eyes, good natured, as if to say _Can you believe him?_  
  
Dimitri blinks in response, the muscles around his mouth twitching.  
  
Dimitri and Felix are sent to the largest receiving room, the door still shut. The hallway stinks of lilies, and Felix wrinkles his nose.  
  
“I’ll let you go in there without me,” he says, and Dimitri frowns at him.  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
Felix looks at him.  
  
“I didn’t know the guy. It’d be weird for me to be at his wake.” He gestures toward the room with his head. “Now get in there. I gotta get out of here before all these flowers give me a goddamn allergic reaction.”  
  
Just then, he sneezes, almost as if on cue.  
  
“Ugh.”  
  
He departs for the front door, reaching in his pocket for a handkerchief, while Dimitri turns to face the door. Just past here, there is…  
  
He takes a deep breath, and pushes inside.  
  
The large, empty room is set up for a rather large wake, folding chairs set in rows, a table off to the side for any food someone might bring. And at the front of the room, made of polished cedar, is a large coffin, its lid shut. Dimitri approaches it, hesitating only a moment before opening the lid to see…  
  
There’s Claude.  
  
His expression is peaceful, almost as though he’s sleeping, hands folded on his chest. It’s strange to see Claude lying there, so still.  
  
Dimitri takes a deep breath, taking off his right leather glove.  
  
He needs to say good-bye. That’s it. A proper one, which they’d never gotten to have. All he has to do is touch Claude to do it.  
  
But where…?  
  
The lips feel too forward, the cheek too playful, but the hand…  
  
Dimitri reaches into the coffin, his bare hand hovering over Claude’s… and slowly, nervously, lowers it until his hand is covering Claude’s.  
  
As soon as Dimitri’s skin touches Claude’s, several things happen all at once.  
  
First, Claude’s eyes fly open with a gasp.  
  
Then, Dimitri’s head knocks, hard, against the lid of the coffin, as Claude yanks downward on his tie. He staggers backwards, clutching his head, as Claude leaps out of his coffin.  
  
“Ow,” he says pitifully. “Claude—”  
  
“Back up,” Claude says, an edge to his voice, and Dimitri looks up to see that Claude has grabbed one of the folding chairs, holding it between them like he’s a lion tamer. “Where the hell am I? And who are you?”  
  
“Um, hi,” Dimitri says, still rubbing the sore spot on his forehead. “You may not… um… do you remember me?” Goddess, what a pathetic question.  
  
“Do I…” Claude blinks, as though taking him in for the first time. “Oh my god, Dimitri? I’m so sorry…”  
  
He sets the chair down, approaching Dimitri as though to embrace him… but Dimitri takes several more steps back, holding his hands up in warning.  
  
There are two golden rules, Dimitri has learned, to the powers that he has. Here is the first: he can touch a dead person or a dead thing once – and only once – to bring them back to life. If he touches them again, even the barest contact with his skin – they will be dead again, forever. There are no do-overs, no second chances. If Claude gets too close to him, the vivacity that has returned to him will depart again, just as suddenly, and never again return.  
  
“Hi,” he tells Claude awkwardly. “I know it’s been a while…”  
  
“I had the strangest dream,” Claude tells him. “I dreamed that I was in a hotel, and I was strangled to death with a plastic bag… Do you think that means something?”  
  
“It means that you were in a hotel, and you were strangled to death with a plastic bag,” Dimitri says. Claude tilts his head, looking confused. “I know it’s strange to hear that, but… uh…”  
  
Claude takes a closer look at their surroundings, at the flower arrangements all around the room. At the coffin he’d just climbed out of.  
  
“Oh.” He looks stricken. “Oh, no.” He turns to Dimitri. “Wait, is this the afterlife? Are you dead, too?”  
  
“No, I’m not, I just… uh…”  
  
His subconscious clock is ticking down the seconds. _Forty-three. Forty-two._  
  
“It’s a long story, but I wanted to say good-bye, because we didn’t get to before, and so… uh… here we are.” Dimitri puts his hands behind his back, still leaning away from Claude. “But since you’re here, maybe you can, uh, tell me who killed you? So that justice can be served?”  
  
“Aw.” Claude gives him a smile. “That’s sweet of you, but I don’t know who killed me. They got me from behind. Damn, you’d really think I would have been smarter than that…”  
  
_Twenty-eight. Twenty-seven._  
  
“Justice, huh?” Claude’s eyes are sparkling. “Did you become a police officer, then? Didn’t think you were the type.”  
  
“Definitely not. I do some consulting with them, sometimes, but…”  
  
_Nineteen. Eighteen._  
  
“We don’t have much time,” he tells Claude, his stomach sinking. “Your family’s coming by for your wake soon… I’m gonna…”  
  
He’ll have to touch Claude again. Take away the life he’d given back.  
  
“I have to touch you again,” he says, unable to help the flush that comes across his cheek. “The natural order of things… dead things have to stay dead, and…”  
  
“Yeah, I get it.” Claude gives him a small, resigned smile. “But, hey. I’m glad you came by. It was good to see you one last time.”  
  
One last time. The words stick in Dimitri’s mind as much as in his heart.  
  
_Twelve. Eleven._  
  
“Hey, Dimitri.” He is drawn from his musings by Claude’s soft expression, smiling at him just as he’d used to. Green eyes, just the way Dimitri remembers them, bright and shining. Vibrant. Alive. “You want to be my last kiss?”  
  
Dimitri stares. “P-pardon?”  
  
Claude smiles, flushing slightly. “You were my first kiss, you know. You want to be my last, too? First and last?” Claude stops to think. “Maybe that’s kinda weird.”  
  
In spite of himself, Dimitri smiles back.  
  
“That’s not weird,” he murmurs. “It’s symmetrical.”  
  
_Eight. Seven._  
  
Claude steps into his space, tilting his chin upwards, and Dimitri dimly registers the new height difference between them, how much taller he’s grown since the last time he saw Claude. Claude gives him one last, trusting smile before closing his eyes, waiting for Dimitri to bend down and close the distance between them.  
  
_Five. Four._  
  
Dimitri remembers, like it happened moments ago, the first time he kissed Claude. The euphoria of their lips connecting, the way every cup of chamomile reminds him of Claude now.  
  
_Three. Two._  
  
His chin tilts down. His mouth is inches from Claude’s. He can feel Claude’s warmth from this close, even though they’re scant centimeters from touching. Dimitri’s lips go as far as they’ll go…  
  
_One_ …  
  
But they will go no further.  
  
_Zero_.  
  
Dimitri stands there, still, heart pounding, taking in the sight of Claude before him. Dressed for a burial, face tilted to meet his, his eyelashes fluttering.  
  
The dead man’s heart still beating.  
  
Claude opens his eyes after a few moments, Dimitri still frozen where he stands.  
  
“It’s okay if you don’t want to kiss me,” he tells Dimitri. “I just thought…”  
  
“No, I do, it’s just…” Claude starts to rise on his tiptoes, and Dimitri shrinks away, tucking his chin to his chest, leaning away from Claude.  
  
“What if…”  
  
It’s reckless. It’s unlike him.  
  
But he says it anyway.  
  
“What if you didn’t have to be dead?”  
  
Claude blinks in surprise, then a grin spreads across his face.  
  
“Sounds preferable.”  
  
Dimitri bites his lip, looking around.  
  
“No one can know,” he tells Claude, sotto voce. “Um… here.”  
  
He takes a few steps away from Claude, firmly shutting the coffin lid. Claude chuckles behind him.  
  
“What are you up to?”  
  
Dimitri fishes in the pockets of his long coat, finding a pair of sunglasses and a beanie. “Here,” he says, holding the items out to Claude, then thinking better of it and carefully setting both atop the coffin lid. “Put these on. And, uh, my coat.”  
  
“Ah, a daring escape,” Claude says, awed, as he puts the items on. “Every guy dreams of this, you know. A dashing knight, rescuing the sleeping beauty from his own funeral…”  
  
An anguished scream sounds from somewhere in the funeral home, and Claude looks up, alarmed.  
  
“What was that?”  
  
Dimitri knows. He thinks he knows. His stomach curdles… but he cannot ignore this opportunity.  
  
“A diversion.”  
  
He beckons to Claude for them to head out the side door of the chamber, near the foyer of the funeral home. Inside the funeral director’s office, from behind the closed door, he can hear the horrified voice of the young woman he’d seen in the hallway just minutes ago.  
  
“Uncle Arundel, no! _No!_ ”  
  
The pit of guilt in Dimitri’s stomach only sours further, because he knows exactly what has happened behind that closed door.  
  
Here is the second golden rule to Dimitri’s powers: He can bring the dead back to life, without consequence, for only one minute. Sixty seconds. At the end of that minute, if Dimitri has not sent the dead back where they belong… the universe will take its vengeance, restore the balance that Dimitri has upset, and take another life in their place.  
  
For Felix’s cat Zoltan, the universe had taken the life of a squirrel. For the strawberries in Dimitri’s kitchen, a daisy from his window box.  
  
And for Claude…  
  
“Please!” he can hear the young woman saying to the funeral director. “Please, call an ambulance! My uncle’s not breathing!”  
  
Claude stops to listen, concern writ on his face.  
  
“Do you think everything’s…?”  
  
“Claude, let’s go,” Dimitri says, urgent, beckoning him out the front door. He doesn’t wait for Claude to follow before barreling through the door himself.  
  
Felix is there, his hands in his pockets, looking up when he sees it’s Dimitri.  
  
“There you are. Ready to head back?” Felix frowns. “Wait, where’s your coat?”  
  
Claude comes out a moment later on Dimitri’s heels, Dimitri’s coat slightly too big on him, looking concerned despite the sunglasses.  
  
“Dima, we should probably stay and help —” He catches himself, seeing Felix, and waves. “Hi! Are you a friend of Dimitri’s?”  
  
Felix blinks in shock. Then he turns to Dimitri, looking utterly murderous.  
  
“Oh, you _didn’t_ ,” he seethes. “Tell me you _didn’t_ , Blaiddyd.”  
  
Dimitri gulps, helplessly. “I…”  
  
“Shut up,” Felix snaps, and turns on his heel. “Let’s get out of here before you make things worse.”  
  
Felix goes, and the other two have no choice but to follow.  
  
\--  
  
“You _really_ went and did it.”  
  
“Felix, please.”  
  
“After all those years of saying you _can’t abuse your powers_ , and _no, Felix, I won’t bring back your pet goldfish, just take better care of the next one_ …” Felix gesticulates, wildly, at Claude, who has fallen asleep across three bus seats as they ride back to Dimitri and Felix’s building. “You’re gonna throw all of that away for some hot dude you saw on the news?”  
  
“He’s not just _some hot dude I saw on the news_ ,” Dimitri says, coldly.  
  
“Right, right, senior year crush, I’m sure he’s the love of your life. I bet he’s going to take it real well when he finds out you murdered a man for him.”  
  
“I didn’t murder anyone!” Dimitri shivers, clutching at his elbows. “I’ve told you, it’s a random proximity thing…”  
  
“ _I_ was in proximity!” Felix swats, hard, at Dimitri’s arm. “Me! But you didn’t even think about that, did you?”  
  
Dimitri wilts.  
  
“I suppose not.” Felix gives a triumphant little _hah_ , slumping in his seat. “I just…”  
  
He looks at Claude, stirring in his sleep, covered in Dimitri’s coat to keep him warm.  
  
“I couldn’t let him die again,” he whispers to Felix. “He was right there, in front of me, and he was so – alive – and I…” He takes a deep breath, burying his face in his hands. “I couldn’t kill him. I’m sorry, Fe.”  
  
“You _should_ be sorry,” Felix says, venomous. Then he deflates. “So, what are you going to do with him now? His face was plastered all over the news. Someone’s going to recognize him.”  
  
“I’ll just disguise myself whenever I head out,” Claude murmurs, his eyes still shut. He stretches, sitting up as he works out the kinks in his body. “Jeez, you two are loud. You could really wake the dead with all that noise.”  
  
He laughs at his own joke. Neither Dimitri nor Felix joins him.

“You think this is funny, zombie boy?” Felix asks him. “After all the shit that went down back there—”

“Felix,” Dimitri says, urgently, cutting him off. Claude… Claude can never know what Dimitri did to get him his life back. At the very least, Dimitri needs to be the one to tell him.

Felix rolls his eyes, but gamely changes the subject.   
  
“So,” Felix says, with one last glare at Dimitri before looking at Claude again. “You’ve got your life back. More or less. What do you plan to do with it?”  
  
Claude leans back in his seat, humming thoughtfully.  
  
“Well, first,” he says, “I’m going to find out who did this to me, and find some way to make sure they face justice. And then…”  
  
He catches Dimitri’s eye, and grins at him.  
  
“And then, I’m going to live.”  
  
\--  
  
Dimitri had told Claude that he should live with Felix (ignoring Felix’s shouts of protest that _I don’t want your zombie boyfriend leaving hair on my soap, boar_ ). It would be safer, if he wasn’t in such close proximity to Dimitri all the time. Knowing that even the most careless brush of Dimitri’s skin with his could end Claude’s newly restored life.  
  
Claude was never one to listen to reason. Always questioning, always scheming his way into a loophole.  
  
“What, I can’t even hold your hand?”  
  
Claude is looking at him skeptically from across Dimitri’s coffee table. Dimitri stands, stiffly as usual, his arms folded close to his chest to avoid accidentally touching Claude.  
  
“Not even a little bit.”  
  
“Why?” Claude raises one of his perfectly manicured eyebrows. “Would you _die_?” It comes across like he’s trying to make another joke about his own death, but…  
  
“You would,” Dimitri says, uncomfortable. “ _You_ would die, Claude. Instantly. And I wouldn’t be able to bring you back. Not this time.”  
  
All of Claude’s teasing evaporates in an instant. “Oh.” He leans back in his seat, looking away for a moment.  
  
“It’s just how these things work,” Dimitri says, desperate to explain himself and the distance he keeps between them, even though distance is the last thing he wants. “We… we get one. That’s it. If I were to ever touch you again, you’d… go back to being dead.”  
  
_And neither of us wants that_ , he thinks, his loneliness creeping back up around him. _Especially not me._  
  
“So,” Claude says thoughtfully, still looking away, “when you held my hand in my coffin… That’s the last time you’ll ever touch me.”  
  
Dimitri wilts, his heart full of regrets for all the ways he’ll never be able to touch Claude. Never be able to hold him after a bad day, never be able to tenderly caress him to show his affections.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Claude turns back to Dimitri.  
  
“I guess a kiss is out of the question, then?”  
  
The corner of his mouth turns up in the smirk Dimitri recognizes so well, and for a moment he completely loses his train of thought.  
  
“I’m… going to make us some tea.”  
  
He heads to the kitchen, where his kettle is just beginning to boil. Two mugs with chamomile tea bags rest on the counter, and Dimitri makes to pour in the water.  
  
“You did want to kiss me back there, didn’t you? At my wake?”  
  
Dimitri yelps, leaping away from the doorway as Claude appears at the entrance to his tiny galley kitchen.  
  
“Don’t do that!” he warns. “At least make a noise when you get up to follow me.”  
  
Claude smirks. “Should I wear a bell?”  
  
“No!”  
  
His smirk widens. “I’m gonna start wearing a bell.”  
  
“No—just—” Dimitri nudges one mug of tea closer to Claude, scooting it across the counter with one hand, almost afraid to touch the hot container. “Drink that.”  
  
Claude takes it, holding the warm mug in his hands as he continues to study Dimitri. Dimitri feels like a cornered animal, terrified of what might happen if Claude gets too close.  
  
“I’ll find a way around this, you know,” Claude tells him. “Already thinking up a plan.”

He taps his forehead, and Dimitri sighs.  
  
“There isn’t one, Claude.” He turns to his sugar bowl, dropping two lumps of sugar into his tea. He has little sense of taste, but somehow he still enjoys sweets, for the film they leave behind on his teeth if nothing else. “And I still think that… that it would be safer, were you to leave. You have your life back… you should make the most of it, not stay here with me. You used to travel everywhere for work, did you not?”  
  
“Yeah,” Claude says from across the kitchen, rummaging seemingly at random through drawers. Dimitri does not look up to face him.  
  
“You could resume traveling. You could… meet someone else. Fall in love with someone else, who won’t kill you if they touch you. But here, your life is in danger every time you get within five feet of me. You ought to—”  
  
He looks up, then, to see something transparent coming toward him, stretching across his face. And it only takes Dimitri a moment to process this sensation before there is something new to experience:  
  
Claude is kissing him.  
  
For a moment Dimitri panics, his hands flailing at his sides, nearly pushing Claude away out of pure instinct. He has kissed no one since the innocent days he shared at school with Claude; he is not used to anyone being so close to him, let alone someone he could so easily kill. But Claude has…  
  
True to his word, he has found a way around their condition.  
  
He is holding a large piece of plastic wrap stretched between their faces, his hands a safe distance away from Dimitri’s face, rising on his tiptoes to let his mouth meet Dimitri’s. Dimitri puts his hands behind his back, fighting the urge to grab Claude and hold on – but he cannot help but lean in, to feel the way Claude’s lips move against his.  
  
There’s a slight prophylactic quality to kissing like this, and Dimitri cannot ignore the barrier of thin plastic between them… But he can feel the warmth of Claude’s face. The softness of his lips, just like they’d been back then. He can hear his little contented sighs.  
  
Claude’s mouth leaves his, though his nose still rubs against Dimitri’s through the plastic wrap.  
  
“I told you,” he says, his voice only slightly muffled by plastic. Dimitri feels, rather than sees, him grin. “I’m good at solving problems.”  
  
Dimitri exhales, shaky, keeping their faces close while unconsciously scooting the rest of his body away.  
  
“Really shouldn’t be doing that,” he murmurs. “If it… if it tears…”  
  
“Maybe I like the danger.” Claude winks at him, and Dimitri makes a stifled moan in the back of his throat. “And if we can figure this out, who knows what else we can figure out?”  
  
“Claude—!”  
  
“Dima,” and Claude’s lips are brushing the plastic wrap, the words transmitted to Dimitri’s skin. “A life spent without getting to kiss you… that’s not a life at all. Not for me.”  
  
And at that, Dimitri can’t help but bend down to kiss Claude again. His hands are still safely behind his back, but the room smells of chamomile, and Claude is here, and Claude is warm.  
  
Dimitri has been too careful, perhaps, over the span of his short life. He has forgotten what it is to live among others. How ironic that Claude, a dead man, will be the one to open the world back up to him.  
  
If they can be careful – if _he_ can be careful – who knows how much time they can find together? Between his caution and Claude’s creativity, perhaps they can make this work, after all.  
  
“We’re going to need more plastic wrap,” he tells Claude, and his new lover laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> there probably won't be more of this, but honestly, this didn't even exist in my brain six hours ago, so who really knows.
> 
> I'm @apostaroni on Twitter! Come and say hello anytime.


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